An Old Hawk Yells At Cloud

The generation that Mead is mocking has grown up with news of one war after another for their entire lives.

Walter Russell Mead makes a bizarre assertion:

One reason the news from Gaza has so massively affected the younger generation is that they have grown up considering peace to be normal and natural. The war in Gaza hasn’t merely introduced young Americans to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It also has shown them the face of war.

Mead’s explanation is typically condescending and ill-informed. The generation that Mead is mocking has grown up with news of one war after another for their entire lives, and many of them have involved the United States directly or in a supporting role. Some of these Americans were just young children when the 9/11 attacks occurred, and almost all of them have grown up without ever knowing a year in which the U.S. military wasn’t engaged in fighting somewhere. If any generation grew up with fantasies about global peace, it was people that came of age at the very end of the Cold War. The generation that has grown up during the “war on terror” has been under no such illusions.